BDD CUCUMBER CHEAT SHEET | INTERVIEW PREPARATION | QA SDET
BDD Cucumber Cheat Sheet – Summary for QA Engineers
Cucumber is a popular tool that supports Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) by enabling test cases to be written in natural language using Gherkin syntax. The primary keywords used in Gherkin include Feature, Scenario, Given, When, Then, And, and But. These are written in .feature files that hold one or more test scenarios.
Cucumber supports data-driven testing through Scenario Outline along with an Examples table. It also allows parameterization through direct step arguments and regular expressions in step definitions.
Step definitions are Java methods that map Gherkin steps using regex or Cucumber Expressions and are annotated with @Given, @When, @Then, etc. These methods reside in packages defined in the glue option of the test runner class, which uses @RunWith(Cucumber.class) and @CucumberOptions.
Cucumber supports tagging (like @Smoke, @Regression) to filter and run specific scenarios. Hooks (@Before, @After) provide setup and teardown functionality. Shared preconditions across scenarios can be defined using the Background section. DataTables help pass structured data to step definitions using collections or POJOs.
Execution can be optimized using dryRun mode to validate step mappings without running tests, and strict mode ensures all steps are defined. Reports can be generated in various formats like HTML, JSON, or integrated with tools such as Allure or Extent Reports.
Cucumber easily integrates with Selenium, Appium, JUnit/TestNG, Jenkins, Maven, and Docker. Parallel test execution is possible using TestNG or dedicated Cucumber plugins.
To follow best practices, maintain clean and reusable steps, keep logic out of step definitions, organize code clearly, and use tags and hooks efficiently.